


We Found Our Voices Together

by cordsycords



Series: lies you tell your friends to prevent them from figuring out your depressing d&d backstory [2]
Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Campaign 02 (Critical Role), Found Family, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-24
Updated: 2018-01-24
Packaged: 2019-03-09 02:44:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,908
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13472028
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cordsycords/pseuds/cordsycords
Summary: or how mollymauk almost dies, and joins a circus in the process.





	We Found Our Voices Together

She's been travelling with the circus for just under a month when they find the purple tiefling, collapsed on the side of the barely travelled road. His clothes are torn and soaked with the blood that slowly oozes out of the deep cuts across his throat. Somehow, he's managed to keep himself conscious. His hands grasp at his neck, desperately trying to keep the blood inside while he wheezes.

 

Kylrie pulls her away, grabs her within his arms so she can't see the gruesome scene. Gustav shouts for Bo to get a healing kit. Then Orna is on her knees next to the tiefling, doing the best she can as she calmly orders one of the Knot sisters (Toya still can't tell which is which) to hand her supplies. It's a tense thirty minutes before the tiefling is unconscious but stable, and placed in the back of one of the wagons. Out in the open, Orna says, so he can soak of the sun's healing rays.

 

Toya watches over him from atop Kylrie's back, eyes trained on the slow and strained rise and fall of his chest. The dual scimitars he was carrying were placed next to him, and they sparkle in the high afternoon sun, a stark contrast to the rest of the items on his person. She taps Kylrie on the head and points to the wagon. He hoists her over his head and sits her down next to their new charge. She stretches out her legs next to him, rubs at them to get the feeling of pins and needles out. She thinks she remembers another of her mother's songs, a song about healing and rest. She sings it under her breath, hums the tune when she doesn't know the words.

 

He doesn't wake up.

 

 

 

The first night the adults take turns watching over him. She's suddenly woken up by the feeling of Kylrie cradling her to his chest. He growls at something she can't see. She blinks her eyes through the haze of sleep to see the tiefling standing below her. Blood is dripping from his chest as he points one of his scimitar's up at her with a shaking hand. She can see his mouth moving but no words come out, and all of the sudden he's in a panic. He hands go up to claw at his bandages, ripping at Orna's hard work until his cuts begin to bleed once more.

 

Within a second he's hit in the back of the head by Bo. Orna patches him up once more. His wrists are tied together and Gustav stashes his scimitars in one of the covered wagons.

 

 

 

She sits in the wagon again with him the next morning, continuing her song from the day before. Her eyes are closed, and she rocks back and forth as a slight summer breeze sweeps through her slowly-growing hair. She feels something shift next to her in the middle of the song and jolts her eyes open to see blood-red eyes staring directly at her. She freezes, waiting for him to jump at her or attack. But he just lies there. Staring at her.

 

"Hi," she says, raising her hand in a wave.

 

He waves back or at least tries to. When he moves one hand the other moves with it, and now is when he realizes that they're tied together. He starts to panic.

 

"No nonono," she raises a hand to his forehead, trying to make him stop his thrashing. He instantly pauses, looking up at her hand.

 

"Sorry," she continues, "y'scared us last night. S'just a precaution, I'm sure Gustav will let you go if I ask."

 

He opens his mouth to say something but remembers that he can't talk so he just nods against her hand.

 

"Okay," she smiles.

 

 

 

It takes a few more days until he’s able to sit up by himself without vomiting. In the meantime, he lapses in and out of consciousness. Orna gives Toya the job of making sure he drinks when he awakens, whether it’s a sip of water or a herbal tea that Orna brewed to help the soreness in his throat.

 

They’re sitting in their wagon together, a day away from the carnival’s next destination. Toya is bored by the travel. Going for a week or more between a performance makes her feel like she’s going out of practice.

 

He seems to sense her boredom. His hands go to fiddle at his belt and within a couple seconds he pulls out a deck of cards, and motions her over to look at them. She settles by his side as he fans them out in front of her. They’re old and well worn, graying around the edges. The pictures on each card are hand painted and she can’t help but gasp at the intricacy of their details.

 

“They’re beautiful,” she says.

 

With a snap of his hands, he folds the cards back into a deck and shuffles them with practiced motions. He then motions for her to pick a card.

 

She reaches her hand out in a flash to grab the card at the top of the deck, making sure that he doesn’t see its face. The card shows a picture of a star against a pitch black sky. She places it back on the top of the deck and he returns to shuffling. She watches his hands a then card is put into the deck. He then stops once more, cuts the deck, cuts it a second time, and then puts the four piles back into one. He motions for her to pick a card.

 

She grabs the top card but is disappointed to see the wrong picture. She looks up to tell him but is stopped when she sees him holding her card between his fingers with a delightfully proud smirk on his face.

 

”You’re magic!” She gasps.

 

He shakes his head and repeats the trick, this time slowing his fingers down so she can see when he slips her card into his sleeve.

 

”Where’d’ya learn to do that?”

 

He shrugs his shoulder and gestures to his neck, his proud smile quickly falling from his face.

 

 

 

She’s standing on top of the platform in full costume and makeup. It’s Gustav’s insistence, that she practices in the same conditions that she is supposed to perform in. Her vision blurs as she looks to the others down below. She backs as far away as she can from the edge, knees shaking where she stands.

 

“No need to be afraid, Toya,” Gustav calls up from down below, “Kylrie will catch you if you fall.”

 

All the others are down there with him, watching her. There’s only a few of them, and she’s already too nervous to sing. She can’t imagine what it will be like when she actually has to perform.

 

Her new tiefling friend is watching as well, from where he’s sitting at the edge of the tent. He had helped them with the set-up all day, doing tasks that were not particularly difficult or strenuous but instead required a deft hand and intense focus. Orna still demands that they keep an eye on him, which is why he’s allowed to watch as they practice for that night’s performance.

 

She begins to sing, but the words come out wrong. The tune that comes from her mouth is just a tone too high, and the quivering of her knees has extended to her voice.

 

She stops in the middle of the first verse, “Gustav, can I come down now?” She calls.

 

“Of course, child,” He replies. With a wave of his hand, Kylrie jumps to the platform and she’s safe in his arms as he slowly makes his way back done. He deposits her back on to the floor as Gustav calls for the Knot sisters and Toya makes her way over to the tiefling.

 

She sits next to him with a huff, covering her face with her hands, “I’ll never get it right.” She turns to look at him. He looks back at her with a neutral expression, the lights in the tent reflecting off his bright red eyes.

 

“It’s really high,” she explains. He looks over to the platform she was standing on, and nods in agreement. Without looking away he grabs his deck from his belt and begins shuffling it. She tries to get a good look at his hands, but once again he’s too fast for her to see any trickery. He pulls a card from the top of the deck and shows it to her without looking.

 

The picture on the card is of a mermaid sitting out on a rock singing, a group of man standing around her with stupid expressions on their face.

 

“D’you do fortunes too?” She asks, looking up at him.

 

His gaze is still trained on the platform, but a small smirk plays at the side of the face.

 

 

 

They stay in that town for a week, but on the final day she counts her purse, meager compared to the other performers but much more than she ever owned by herself, and brings it to Gustav with a request.

 

“I want to bring him to a cleric,” she says.

 

“Who to a cleric?” He asks, distracted as he works through the accounting books.

 

“My friend. I want to see if a cleric will give his voice back. I saw a temple in town.”

 

Gustav seems to contemplate it, or maybe he’s not really listening to her, “Bring Bo with you, don’t be long.”

 

“Thank you!” She sings as she skips out the door, running to where the others are taking the tents down. The tiefling is helping as much as Orna will let him, but she’s quite particular about how much he can and can’t do. She grabs the tiefling’s hand, and he follows without question.

 

“Bo, we’re going to town. Gustav said you have to come too,” She shouts at him. He huffs a bit, puts down what he was doing, and follows Toya and the tiefling, staying a few feet behind them the entire way to the temple.

 

They earn side-eyed glare when they walk into the temple, and Toya can feel his hand grasp onto hers a little tighter than it was before. She goes up to the first holy-person she sees and puts on the best beggar-child face she can: a tear at the corner of her cheek as she glances upwards through her eyelashes, “Can you fix my friend, please?” She forces her voice to rasp, making her appear even more distraught than usual, “He got hurt trying to protect me, and it’s taken me so long to get this money.”

 

The holy-woman looks between the two of them: a small dwarf girl with a lavender-skinned tiefling who tries not to meet her gaze. She reaches out her hand for the coin, and Toya places in her palm, “Oh please, let it be enough,” Toya looks up at the woman once more, and she knows she has her.

 

 

 

“Are you sure it didn’t work?” She asks, poking at his throat. He slaps her hand away. He’s been quiet since the healing, and more belligerent than usual.

 

He shakes his head. Turns away from her gaze. She tries to move around him to meet it again, but he just moves again.

 

“It _did_ work,” she realizes, “You just don’t want to talk yet.”

 

He doesn’t move to correct or deny her.

 

“It’s okay. I understand. I think.”

 

 

 

He integrates into the carnival as well as a mute man can. He helps put up the tent and bring it down. He hands out flyers in town with Orna and the sisters. Gustav seems to favor him, if only for the fact that he’s unable to complain about the worst of the tasks he’s given to complete.

 

A month and three towns later, she’s finally supposed to perform her big act with Kylrie for the first time in front of an audience. Orna helps her into her dress, braids her hair and applies makeup with a practiced, steady hand before the audience has even appeared. The sisters give her a pat on the head, and her friend flicks her earlobe with his pinky finger.

 

_Good luck_.

 

The worst part is the waiting. She has to stay up on the platform by herself for the first two acts of the show. No one is supposed to see her up there until it’s her turn to perform, so sits with her back against the pole that holds the tent up and curls her knees to her chest and tries not to look down.

 

When the spotlight finally does shine on her she stands up on shaking legs, and suddenly all the practicing she’s been doing goes out the window as she looks down to see dozens of people looking up at her. Kylrie rages against the metal of his chains. Gustav lifts his hands expectedly towards her and gives her a nod to begin as Desmond crescendos into her accompaniment.

 

She sings. But not well. Not her best. Definitely her worst. Kylrie plays his part, and Desmond tries to compensate for a lackluster performance, and when it’s done the spotlight on her dims and she has to sit back down, with her knees to her chest.

 

And she has to cry.

 

 

 

Orna takes Toya’s makeup off with a soothing hand and wipes the tear tracks off her face without a word. She hasn’t spoken since the show ended.

 

The sounds of men shouting can be easily heard from back in the main tent. A customer who wants his money back, no doubt. It’s nothing that Gustav hasn’t seen before, and they have no doubt that he can handle it until the telltale sounds of a scuffle and a body falling to the ground makes them all rush out the performer’s flap.

 

The tiefling pushes through them and draws his dual scimitars for the first time since they had met him. With a flash he’s in front of where Gustav is laid out on the ground, the scimitars raised at the angry men.

 

He doesn’t say a word as he slowly drags one of the blades against his arm, shards of ice appearing on the blade as blood flows from the wound.

 

The men leave with a startled yelp. The circus packs up as fast as they can, and they’re gone by the time dawn breaks.

 

 

 

Some nights, after performances, she can’t sleep. She quietly makes her way out of Kylrie’s arms and sneaks into the big tent, surprised to see the light of a lantern coming from the center of the tent. Her friend sits there, dragging a whetstone against the edge of his swords.

 

“Evening,” she calls out from across the tent. He doesn’t startle, doesn’t turn his gaze away from his blade. He beckons her over. She walks over quietly and curls up next to his side. He brings her closer into his embrace, wrapping one side of the wine-red robe that he had bought the day before around her body. He continues his work.

 

“Do you do this every night?” She asks. He shrugs his shoulders.

 

“I think Gustav is mad at me,” she continues, watching him work, “That’s the third time I’ve messed up in front of everyone.”

 

He nudges her in the side with his elbow. She looks up to see him gesturing in front of him.

 

“What?” She asks.

 

He gestures towards his neck, moving his hand over his throat up towards his mouth as if he’s miming that he needs to vomit.

 

“You want me to sing?”

 

He nods, gesturing once more.

 

She stands up, turning towards where the audience would sit during a performance. The tent is silent except of the two of them, but in here mind’s eye she can she dozens of people sitting in front of her. Looking at her expectedly, Gustav and Desmond and Kylrie and Orna and the Knot sisters among them.

 

Her friend reaches out to grasp her hand, calming the shaking she hadn’t noticed had begun.

 

She closes her eyes, squeezing them so tight that it almost hurts, “Everyone’s still looking at me. I want them to stop.”

 

_Won’t you ride the wind and go, white seabird_

_Won’t you ride the wind and go, mollymauk_  

_Down upon the southern ocean sailing_

  _Down below Cape Horn_

 

She thinks she’s imagining it at first. She’s wanted him to answer her for so long now, but she hasn’t said so out of respect for his wishes. She used to try and figure out what his voice sounded like, imagined that it was low and heroic. That when he finally spoke, it’d be some kind of revelation.

 

_See the mollymauk floatin’ on his wide white wings_

_And lord, what a lonely song he sings_

_Down upon the southern ocean sail in_

_Down below Cape Horn_

 

There’s barely a tune to his words, and his voice is so hoarse that he barely sings above a whisper. The song is rough an imperfect. There’s no grand meaning to its lyrics, or any moral to speak of. He doesn’t sing for coin or fame. He sings for her, and her alone.

 

_And he’s got no compass and he’s got no gear_

_And there’s none can tell ya how the mollymauks steer_

_Down upon the southern ocean sailing_

_Down below Cape Horn_

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, the pace of this story is just fucking weird but I just wanted to post it already dammit.
> 
> This has now been made into a series. Since Taliesin isn't going to give us any backstory, I'm going to basically take anything he (or Matt) say as fact, and turn it into a backstory until the canon tale of Mollymauk is revealed.
> 
> For my next one-shot: Molly's story about his swords that he told Fjord in episode 2.
> 
> _Also thank you to everyone whose kudo'd the first fic of this series. That fic now has the same amount of kudos as another one of my fics that has four times the hits, which is insane (and also a huge confidence boost).  
>  Y'all are awesome and I appreciate you._


End file.
